Chinese dynasty shines up its Paris jewel, Lanvin
FT WEEKEND – STYLE: Chinese dynasty shines up its Paris jewel
By Kitty Go, Financial Times
Published: Jan 29, 2005
It was, by anyone’s stan-dards, an odd match: Wang Xiao Lan, head of Taiwan’s biggest publishing company, United Daily News Group, and Lanvin, France’s oldest fashion house.
And yet since “Madame Wang”, as everyone calls her, bought the troubled brand in September 2001 and installed Alber Elbaz as its designer, it has become possibly the hottest label in Paris – the one all the buyers talk about instead of the couture shows when they are in town to buy the pre-collections.
Consider, for example, the reaction of one private client last week after attending a pre-collection Lanvin viewing. “It’s the most exciting thing I’ve seen all week,” she said of Elbaz’s “very French” exploration of Americana. “Cowboy” shirts were crafted from three layers of organza so the sleeves remained sheer; easy “T-shirts” were made of blonde mink; evening slips bore fringes of laser-cut, midnight-blue taffeta.
The diminutive, sixty-something Wang – whose own taste is rather more conservative – hardly gives interviews and hates posing for photographs. Odd, perhaps, since she isahigh-profile business figure and a member of a new fashion elite of Chinese buyers repositioning established European brands. (Others include Christina Ong with Mulberry, Dickson Poon with Harvey Nichols and ST Dupont, Anthony Lim with Hardy Amies, and Silas Chou with Asprey.)
Still, tired of rumours circulating about whether she would sell this jewel in her empire (it was rumoured last year that Louis-Vuitton Moët Hennessy was interested), Wang decided to set the record straight.
“One of the managers in Hong Kong was told, ‘Lanvin cannot pay you, it will close, and so on,’ but we are still here. A lot of misunder standing is caused by the media. [As far as Chinese tabloids go] there is so little respect.”
Nevertheless, part of the rumour undoubtedly started from the odd-man-out position of Lanvin in Wang’s empire, as she acknowledges. “Our family is in media, so I cannot consider Lanvin as part of the family holdings,” she says. “Everyone has an outside interest.”
Then there’s the fact that both Wang’s purchase of Lanvin and the hiring of Elbaz occurred by chance. “It was a coincidence: I was helping a friend from Hong Kong buy Lanvin, but at the last minute she didn’t want it, so it fell to the lawyer to look for a buyer. I bought it to help a friend.”
Wang was familiar with the label because she used to buy all her father’s clothes from Lanvin, but admits she knew hardly anything about the women’s wear.
“I didn’t know who Cristina Ortiz [the designer at that time] was. I thought her lines were not bad – simple – but they were for veeery, veerrry slim women, and I was not waiting for these dresses to wake up the sleeping beauty.”
Wang did not know of Elbaz either before their first meeting. “When he called, I felt I had to meet him; I think he has a good nose. So do I! So in five to seven minutes we settled everything at my hotel in Paris. I may not know how to cook, but when I go to a restaurant, I know if the food is good or not.”
Elbaz joined the company in October 2001. At the Paris meeting, he asked about a contract and got an unexpected reply: “My father worked for 50 years without contracts.”
Since being at Lanvin, the only directions Wang has given Elbaz are: one, no more haute couture (“We will only have the opportunity to serve 600-800 customers and we will not survive on this”); and two, after his first collection, she made the point that “not everyone has the chance to go out to parties every night. You have to think of the people who go to the office and what they can wear during the day”.
In spite of her fondness for her designer and what he does, Wang’s everyday uniform is a qipao, the traditional Chinese dress.
“I wear Chinese dress to show I am Chinese,” she shrugs. “I didn’t like it 40 years ago when people couldn’t distinguish me from other races and would ask, ‘Are you Japanese? Are you Korean? Are you Vietnamese?’ I’m Chinese, so I wear the Chinese dress with the qipao [mandarin] collar so there is no question.”
Wang doesn’t even commission Elbaz to create qipaos for her, although there was a mink-trimmed, mandarin-collared woolen number in last autumn’s collection. She will, however, wear jackets, coats, accessories and shoes by Lanvin, and is partial to the current iconic oversize pearls wrapped in black tulle.
Of her choice to own a French label and not wear its clothes, she says, “If I am allergic to the sun, that doesn’t mean I cannot appreciate the good weather in St Tropez”.
Wang spends a lot of time in Europe, and thinks that China is a long way from producing a designer or label worthy of international recognition. “We are strong in exports, textiles and manufacturing but we don’t have someone like Alber,” she says. “The Chinese are not bad but they are not really good, either.”
Wang, who was born in Sichuan but grew up in Taiwan, does not see being Chinese as an advantage to doing business in China.
“Anyone is capable,” she says. “It depends on your approach. Just being Chinese will not guarantee success in China. Alber cannot speak Chinese, but he is loved everywhere – New York, Japan, Shanghai, Taiwan. I don’t think even as a business person, language is that important. Personality is more important.”
As are respect and family. In a rare television appearance with Elbaz, Wang told a Taiwanese TV presenter, “I love Jewish people because they value country and family. Plus Alber loves his mother. Anyone who respects his parents has to be a good person.”
She herself has recently entrusted Lanvin’s management to her son.
“I don’t think I will acquire another brand, and I don’t know if this will become a mega-brand,” she says. “You’ll have to ask my son and granddaughter. I’m very old and I hope they continue the business.
“Of course,” she adds, “my granddaughter is only four.”
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